


Abrasion

by thatsnotmyname32



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Gen, Minato-centric, Orochimaru's Experiments, Pre Hokage Minato, Pulled out of the time stream, Time Travel, some other stuff too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2020-07-29 04:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20076061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsnotmyname32/pseuds/thatsnotmyname32
Summary: After the Fourth Shinobi War, Orochimaru cooperates with Konoha, sharing his research. When one of his experiments fall 'victim' to a pair of idiots, an unexpected person is plucked from the timeline and unceremoniously dumped into the future, with no real way of knowing if he can ever go home. Mostly Minato-centric, with MinaSaku.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! So I was just checking through some of my unposted stuff, and saw that this had a completed first chapter. I proof read, added stuff, changed a couple of words, and ended up with this. :) Life has been totally sucking lately, what with not being able to find a house to live in, even with applying for tons and tons of them! Been reading a lot of stuff on fanfiction and AO3, mostly Sailor Moon, then reading the manga for it, and also discovering Sword Art Online.
> 
> Anyway, I don't want to bore you too much with the woes of my life, so I'll just get you straight into the story then, yeah?

His eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

Could these morons not do _anything_ right?

Seriously, was it too hard for them to actually _listen_ to what he said?

Obviously so, since they were _still _doing it _wrong_.

Silently, he counted to ten, but that did nothing for his growing irritation.

Finally, he snapped.

"Would you two IDIOTS kindly stop manhandling things like that? You're going to break it!"

The two Konoha shinobi stopped, turned, and put on their best sheepish impressions.

"Sorry, Orochimaru-sama," one of them, who looked _vaguely_ familiar, said. "How did you want us to move them, again?"

Orochimaru sighed a long suffering sigh. "Never mind," he told the incompetents. "I'll do it myself."

The two ineffectual fools seemed glad to get out of the way as Orochimaru formed the seals necessary to do a _simple_ transferring seal (_why_ they weren't teaching them these things at the Academy, he'll _never _know) to move his precious experiment, and it was done. Quick and easy, without any damage, like it should have been from the start. Casting a quick glare at the two shinobi, he found himself wishing, not for the first time that day (or even that _hour_) that he could send them packing, but they were here to 'spy' on him for the Hokage, after all.

And according to the 'terms' of his 'pardon', it was something he would just have to put up with.

Once everything was moved, Orochimaru headed down the corridors of the base (one of his favourite ones, oh, the research he'd done here!) in search of Karin. The girl was supposed to be cataloguing his scrolls that he had here, mostly on his more _humane_ research, that Konoha wanted a copy of, at the very least. Yet another concession he'd had to make, though it rankled still. He placated himself with the private knowledge that he'd managed to keep a _few_ places secret.

Just out of petty spite, of course.

When he found her, Karin was lounging back in a chair that she practically leapt out of at the sight of him. "Orochimaru-sama!" she exclaimed. "I-I-I was just taking a break! There's a _lot_ of scrolls to go through, after all!"

Orochimaru smirked, having noticed the picture of Sasuke-_kun_ that she'd failed to hide in time. "Of course, I'm _sure_ that's why you were taking a break," he practically purred, enjoying the deep red that rose over her face. "But never mind that. How far have you come along?"

As Karin rambled on about all the scrolls she'd found so far, Orochimaru's gaze wandered around the room. His eyes fell on a spot on the wall, and he remembered that, when he'd first built this base, he'd hidden a room behind that wall. Sighing internally, he cursed the fact that he'd forgotten it, even as he remembered what was behind there. If only those two Konoha shinobi weren't here… Ah well, it's not like he'd ever succeeded with it, not the way he'd intended at least. Perhaps now, after all these years… He started walking to the wall.

"Hey! Orochimaru-sama! Are you even listening to me?"

Ignoring Karin's ranting, Orochimaru bit his thumb, then reached up to swipe it over a small seal barely visible in the cracks of the brick. Vaguely he heard Karin let out an undignified screech when the wall suddenly (and noisily to his annoyance) started sliding open. Soon enough, the Konoha nin turned up, stances alert.

"What the heck is this?" one of them demanded.

"I don't remember this being in your official itinerary for this place!" the other said.

"My apologies," Orochimaru said smoothly. "I'd actually forgotten it was here. But now, thanks to Karin removing all the scrolls from the wall, we can see what's become of this experiment after all these years."

Once the door was open, the snake Sannin stepped through, the two Konoha ninja following hesitantly, kunai drawn. Orochimaru found the old light switch, his eyes lighting up when he saw something he'd misplaced years ago. Ahh, so _th__i__s_ is where it was! Smirking, he walked up to a desk, picking up a dusty scroll to read over it. The scroll had nothing to do with the experiment in the room, but he _had _wondered where it had gotten to.

"What were you doing in here?" one of the Konoha shinobi asked, eyeing the large metal archway in the middle of the room.

"This, my fellows, was a room I researched time travel in," Orochimaru stated proudly.

The two ninja shared a 'look'. "Time travel?" one said uncertainly. "I didn't think that sort of thing was even possible."

"Oh, it is _more _than possible," Orochimaru assured them. "It's a well documented phenomenon that Konoha and other villages have looked into, though you need the right clearance to see said documentation. But this was a more… obscure branch of study on the subject. What it boils down to is that this device would bring someone from the past to the present. It took a good amount of years out of my precious time, but eventually I deemed it completely impossible without _decades_ of utter dedication to the matter. Now, be careful not to touch anything, you might accidentally…"

A loud, metallic shrieking noise was heard, and Orochimaru turned towards the shinobi who, for some reason, had just pressed a random button.

"…set something off," he finished with a _long_-suffering sigh, followed up with a heated glare.

The machine whirled to life, lights flaring and alarms sounding as it started up. "Aren't you going to do something?" the other Konoha idiot asked.

"There's nothing I _can_ do," the Sannin said. "Your imbecile of a partner is the one who set off this little cataclysm, even though I'd been telling the two of you to stop _touching_ _things_ that you do not comprehend _all day_. Now, we must face the consequences of your unwillingness to listen to simple commands, something I never thought _that_ impossible for a Konoha shinobi."

"What's gonna happen, Orochimaru-sama?" Karin asked, a tinge of fear in her voice.

"In the simplest terms I can think of, for the benefit of our moronic companions here, we are about to be visited by a ghost of the past," Orochimaru told her. "This experiment was designed to pluck a target from their time line and bring them here. There were a few subjects that I had hand-picked for this, though I am not sure I remember which one it is that was last set into the computers settings. It has been a couple of decades, after all."

"What the heck does that mean?" she asked, but before Orochimaru could answer, a bright light radiated through the room, temporarily blinding all but the Sannin himself.

Grinning, Orochimaru stared with glee at the successful conclusion of an experiment that he'd been mostly sure would fail, even as the silhouette of a long dead man emerged from the now fading brightness. Looking completely confused and disorientated, Namikaze Minato stepped forward, legs trembling slightly, before they gave up beneath him and the man collapsed into a heap to the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Fourth Shinobi War, Orochimaru cooperates with Konoha, sharing his research. When one of his experiments fall 'victim' to a pair of idiots, an unexpected person is plucked from the timeline and unceremoniously dumped into the future, with no real way of knowing if he can ever go home. Mostly Minato-centric, with MinaSaku.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Profile name changed! You may have noticed. Anyway, this chapter's already up on fanfiction, now I'm catching up.

**Chapter Two**

Karin stared down at the man on the floor. “_That’s_ the Yondaime?” she asked. “He looks… _younger_ than the other one. Y’know, the one from the war.”

Orochimaru rubbed his chin thoughtfully and contemplated the prone man before them. “Well, I did take the samples of his DNA and chakra _before_ he was even Hokage,” he mused. “So it’s really not all that surprising.”

The two Konoha ninja had been gaping like fish out of water, but now they rushed to the fallen man.

“He’s out cold,” one of them said. “But there’s a pulse.”

“He might need medical attention, but neither of us are medics,” the other spoke.

“Orochimaru-sama, can you help us out here?” the first one said to him. “Uh, Orochimaru-sama…? Oi!”

“Hm?” Orochimaru had wandered over to take readings from the data scrolls that had recorded what had happened thanks to chakra and seals. “Ah yes… Karin, see to him, would you?”

“What?” Karin argued shrilly. “But I’m not a medic either!”

“Just check him over,” Orochimaru said. “You _do_ have the basics that Kabuto taught you, do you not?”

Karin grumbled but went over to where the Konoha idiots had turned the Yondaime onto his back. Her hand glowed a weak, shaky green as she performed a _very_ rudimentary medical diagnostic. When she was done, she sat back on her heels.

“I _think_ he’s just passed out?” she said uncertainly. “Chakra exhaustion maybe?”

“You think?” one of the flunkies said, his tone a combination of frustration and a bit of anger. “You _think_!?”

“Hey!” Karin snapped. “I _said_ I’m not a medic! If you want him checked over by one, go get them yourselves!”

“Maybe we will then!” the other said hotly.

“While I’m sure your discussion is _absolutely_ fascinating for you,” Orochimaru said, “I can’t _think_ with all this racket. Do me a favour and hush, would you? Or is that _also_ beyond your capabilities?”

The look that Orochimaru graced them with was one of a perfected mix of judgement, and a chastising look a parent might give a child. All three before him were annoyed at the look, but they did zip their lips for the next twenty minutes or so, until Orochimaru turned back to them and came forward to do his own diagnostic.

“Hey!” Karin whined. “Why couldn’t _you_ have just done that before?” she demanded.

“This is not a medical diagnostic,” Orochimaru said. “Though I suppose it could do the same job. Think of it more as a temporal check. I’m making sure my readings match what his chakra and body are doing.”

“And… do they?” one of the idiots asked.

“…I suppose they do,” Orochimaru said. “Alright, I suppose we ought to wake him, then. Karin, go to room eight and get the vial with the blue liquid in it. The one next to the green one, not the purple one.”

Karin looked like she wanted to protest again, but one glance from Orochimaru quelled her argument and she left, returning shortly after and handing it over. “Oi, you two,” she said. “That guy who’s always stalking us is in here, he wants to see you.”

“You mean Yamato-Taichou?” one of them asked, and she nodded.

“Off you go then,” Orochimaru said as he prepared a dose. “I’m sure you have _lots_ to tell him, ne?”

The two Konoha ninja shared a glance, then one said, “I’ll go. Kotetsu can stay here, keep an eye on you.”

The Sannin ignored him as he measured the dosage in his hand. “What is that?” Karin asked, obviously curious.

“This is a chakra booster,” Orochimaru said. “One far superior to the sort you’d find in a hospital. But then, those ones are… gentle, I guess you could say, in comparison to this one.”

“What does that mean?” the flunkie left behind, Kotetsu it seemed, demanded.

“It means that this will force him to wake up,” Orochimaru said. “It will, none too gently, send chakra through his coils. I really only use it for emergencies, the visceral reactions are not at all pretty. Speaking of… Karin, hand that waste basket over here. He _may _throw up.”

“_What_!? He _may_?!” Karin looked thoroughly disgusted, but handed over the waste basket anyway.

Almost immediately once the booster was injected, the supine man’s body tensed and spasmed, and Orochimaru quickly stepped back to avoid a kicked out leg. Kotetsu rushed forward, trying to make sure the man didn’t bite his own tongue, even as Karin shrieked and leapt out of reach of the flailing man. Once the spasms died down, blue eyes shot open as Minato took a gasping breath, then started to heave. He sat up, and Kotetsu grabbed the waste basket, but in the end, the Namikaze kept the contents of his stomach firmly in place.

Minato was staring wildly around the room, confusion on his face. Then he saw Orochimaru and his eyes widened before he gasped out, “Orochimaru-sama?”

“Minato-san,” the Sannin greeted. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Minato tried rather unsuccessfully to stand a few times, despite ‘help’ from Kotetsu, before finally giving up and staying where he was. “There was a mission to one of the outposts, my gennin and I were delivering messages…” he stopped, then looked around. “What is this place?”

“This is one of my labs,” Orochimaru said. “You’ve been the unwitting recipient of one of my experiments, though I’d actually given up on this years ago. But you can thank this dunderhead and his partner, wherever he is, for you being here.”

Orochimaru indicated to Kotetsu, who stood a little straighter when his former Hokage, who clearly had never actually been Hokage, glanced at him. “What experiment?” Minato asked, trying again to stand, and succeeding this time, even if he was still quite unsteady on his feet.

“A time travel experiment,” Orochimaru said simply, and shock was upon Minato’s face. “You are now twenty five years in the future.”

Silence, then Karin slapped her forehead. “Way to just blurt it out, Orochimaru-sama!” she sniped.

Minato’s eyes were wide and wild, reminding Orochimaru of a panicked animal about to flee. “Wh-what?” the words stumbled from the man. “Wh-why? Can… can you send me back?”

“No,” the Sannin said simply. “You were plucked from the time stream, and another you kept moving along it. If you were somehow sent back, there would be two of you there.”

Minato nodded, more on reflex than anything, and his eyes closed as he breathed in deeply to steady himself, before exhaling a long sigh. Then he opened his eyes and asked, “What now, then?”

“You could return to the village,” Orochimaru said. “Keep in mind of course, that it has changed drastically in the last quarter of a century. Or… I _suppose_ you could stay here for a while, though I have to tell you, I will only be here for a few more weeks before I return to my main laboratory.”

“I… I don’t know what I’ll do,” Minato admitted.

It was then that the door burst open, and Minato stumbled back, even as Kotetsu and Karin jumped at the sound, and Orochimaru just calmly turned to the door. “Yamato-Taichou!” Kotetsu exclaimed, wincing at the sight of the angry man in the doorway. “Izumo!” Ah, the other flunkie was behind him.

“WHAT is going on here?” Yamato demanded, then his eyes fell upon Minato. “What have you done, Orochimaru?”

“What have _I_ done?” Orochimaru said, some of his frustration from the last few days coming to the surface. “Maybe you should be asking what your two little flunkies have done. _They_ are the ones who haven’t been able to keep their hands to themselves, _touching_ everything when I repeatedly told them not to. This idiot here is the one who activated _my machine_, bringing the Yondaime…”

Minato let out a strangled noise at that, but Orochimaru ignored him in favour of continuing his rant.

“…forward from the past! None of this would have even happened if they could have just _obeyed simple instructions_!”

Orochimaru was glaring quite heatedly at the mokuton user, who was now wide eyed and uncertain. He glanced at Kotetsu, who looked appropriately shamed, then at Karin, who was now glaring at the new intruder. A glance over his shoulder at Izumo, and finally Yamato sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I overreacted. And you’re right, these two really shouldn’t be touching things they don’t understand. But the question now is, what are we going to do with Yondaime-sama?”

“Uh, excuse me?” Minato spoke up. “I… don’t really know what happened after I left my time, but please, I’m not actually Hokage. Though I don’t deny I’m glad to hear I achieved that, of course.”

“How old are you?” Orochimaru asked.

“Twenty,” was the reply, and the Sannin nodded thoughtfully.

“You became Hokage around three years later,” he mused. “I gather you haven’t even gone on the Kannabi mission yet, either?”

“Never been there,” Minato confirmed, then turned a shade of green, and wobbled on his feet.

“Yondaime-sama!” Kotetsu and Izumo both called, with the former rushing forward to stop him from falling.

“Perhaps you should take him to the personnel quarters, and let him rest,” Orochimaru said. “Karin, go with them.”

“_Wha__aa_…? But why?” Karin whined, but she went with them anyway, with Minato supported between Izumo and Kotetsu, and Yamato levelled a suspicious glare at him, before following them.

It was only a few hours later that Orochimaru emerged from that room, utterly fascinated and satisfied with the results he’d gotten. Though it was unlikely he would ever set the machine in motion again, considering how long it had taken to actually work… Still, this was invaluable data for some of his other projects.

He found Karin back in the scroll room just outside the room he’d been in. “The Konoha dudes sent a message to the village,” she told him. “Another team’s probably gonna come here.”

Orochimaru sighed. “The perils of popularity, I suppose,” he said.

Karin snorted. “Yours? Or the Yondaime’s?” she asked snarkily.

“Probably both,” was the unflappable reply, and Orochimaru grinned at Karin’s chagrined look. “Come now, Karin. We still have a lot more work to do here. Wouldn’t want to get behind the schedule the Hokage set now, would we?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Fourth Shinobi War, Orochimaru cooperates with Konoha, sharing his research. When one of his experiments fall 'victim' to a pair of idiots, an unexpected person is plucked from the timeline and unceremoniously dumped into the future, with no real way of knowing if he can ever go home. Mostly Minato-centric, with MinaSaku.

It wasn't long before Minato learned that they were in Grass Country, not far from the border with the Land of Fire. Konoha was about a day and a half away. The one called Yamato had sent out a clone just over two and a half days ago, so someone from Konoha would likely be here soon. In the meantime, Minato just had to sit put, and think about what he was going to do. Was he going to go back to the village? Probably. It was his home, after all.

He was feeling better now, having some solid rest, and regular meals. Orochimaru checked up on him regularly, mostly to do some tests, make sure he didn't dissolve into a puddle of goo. That sort of thing. And when he came by, Minato would always ask about his progress, was he _sure_ he couldn't get back? That last bit had devolved into a heated philosophical debate over the mechanics of time travel, with arguments on causality, alternate time lines, and set events that he was _sure_ had delighted the Sannin.

Not that he'd ever admit to it.

Also in the meantime, Izumo and Kotetsu, whom he'd last seen as recently graduated gennin, two years younger than his own team, were catching him up on twenty five years of history. They'd glossed over a few things, like the Kannabi Bridge mission. Minato had asked Orochimaru later, and had been horrified to learn what had happened to Obito, and then later Rin.

Most recently, Kotetsu had told him about a chuunin exam, which apparently his son (he had a _son!?_) had participated in, and beat a Hyuuga prodigy. There was something about an invasion, but Kotetsu had been called away before he could really get into the details. He'd get the rest of the story later, he supposed.

Right now, Minato was throwing kunai at a target. He was, quite frankly, bored. Orochimaru was busy, and Izumo and Kotetsu had gone out to meet the incoming Konoha team. Yamato was off stalking Orochimaru somewhere, and Minato was kind of avoiding Karin. Every time he saw her and her Uzumaki hair, he was reminded that he wasn't going home, to his _own_ time. _Not_ going back to Kushina, his girlfriend that he'd been planning to ask to officially move in with him.

He closed his eyes, lowering the arm he'd raised to throw his next kunai. It _hurt _to think of her, though not as much as he'd thought it would. After all, she hadn't lost him like he'd lost her. The other him, the one who'd continued in his time line, he'd loved her, married her, and had a family with her. Even if it hadn't lasted, at least they'd been together at the end.

A loud banging interrupted his thoughts, and Minato turned to see the very person he'd been avoiding coming straight for him. "Oi! Namikaze!" she shouted (could _any_ Uzumaki talk without yelling?). "The new Konoha team is here, let's get going, blondie!"

She strode over and grabbed him by his shirt arm, dragging him along. "I assure you, I am quite capable of making my own way," he said.

"Of course you are," Karin snarked, still not letting go, then her whole demeanour changed, her tone turning to a sweet lilt. "I can't believe it! Sasuke-kun is coming here! I had no idea he'd be part of the team!"

_Sasuke-kun_, as Minato had learned over the last couple of days, was the coolest, most gorgeous man that Karin had ever met. She had several pictures of him hung up on her wall (he was _clearly_ an Uchiha from the look of it), and from what Izumo had once hinted, even had a couple of his old shirts that she slept in. The girl was _obsessed_, to say the least.

Finally, they reached the main area of the base, which was where they were all apparently going to meet, and when they got there, Minato noticed Karin stiffen immediately. "What is _she_ doing here?" she hissed, letting Minato go and stomping forward, leaving him to follow hesitantly.

The _she_, as it turned out, was a pink haired woman wearing a red qipao dress, a black obi, and shorts underneath the dress. The woman stood between two men, one matching the most recent photo Karin had of her Sasuke-kun, the other a ninja in black attire that exposed his midriff. The woman was, in a word, _beautiful_, and with how close she stood to Sasuke… Well, he could see why Karin wasn't happy she was here.

"_What_ are you doing here?" Karin screeched at the woman.

The pinkette sniffed haughtily. "I'm here because _I'm _a medic," she said. "I was assigned this mission by Hokage-sama."

Karin huffed, then turned her attention to Sasuke. "Oh, Sasuke-kun!" she said. "I've missed you. It's just not the same around here without you, you know."

She shoved her way between Sasuke and the other woman, knocking the pinkette aside, causing her to trip. Minato attempted to catch her, since he'd caught up to them, but he'd underestimated the force that Karin had used to push her, and the two of them ended up tumbling to the ground in a tangled mess. She landed rather heavily on him, and for a moment, the two of them were staring at each other.

In that instant, Minato took in a lot of details about her all at once. Such as the varying shades of green in her wide eyes, the differing strands of pink hued hair that tumbled down, and even, to his surprise and quite frankly interest, the violet rhombus upon her forehead. There were a few light freckles scattered across her nose, her cheeks were lightly flushed pink, and her shoulder length hair, which was brushing his face, felt incredibly soft.

One moment he was staring, the next, she was scrambling off of him. Minato followed suit in standing up, brushing himself off as the pinkette rounded on Karin.

"You clumsy, moronic imbecile!" she raged.

"Hey! It's not _my_ fault you fell," Karin flat out lied as she clung to Sasuke's arm. "Admit it, Haruno, _you're_ the clumsy one here."

"Karin, Sakura, stop it," Sasuke ordered.

Karin huffed and gripped Sasuke's arm tighter, and the aptly named Sakura blew some hair out of her face in a clear sign of frustration. Then, the other one with them spoke up.

"This is a fascinating exhibition of female competition for what they perceive as the alpha male," he said, pulling out a notebook and scribbling furiously.

Karin looked ready to burst again, and Sakura also looked ready to blow her top. The two of them simultaneously thwacked him over the head, with Sakura yelling, "Can it, Sai!"

"Well well," came a new voice, and they all looked over to see that Orochimaru had arrived. "I never thought _you_ would come here, Sasuke."

"Orochimaru," Sasuke said. "I came because I have some questions for you."

"I shall endeavour to answer them," the Sannin said smoothly. "In the meantime, Sakura. Aren't you here to give Minato a check-up?"

Sakura nodded. "Can you show me a room I can do the check-up in?" she asked.

"Of course," Orochimaru said. "Karin, now that you've properly greeted Sasuke, you can return to the second annex and continue your cataloguing."

"B-but Orochimaru-sama!" Karin stuttered, clearly not wanting to let go of Sasuke.

"_Now_, Karin," the Sannin ordered, and Karin looked incredibly torn, but after giving Sakura a heated glare, she stomped off.

"Minato," Orochimaru said. "Why don't you take Sakura to one of the rooms in the third corridor? Sasuke and I can go have a nice chat in the main lab. Sasuke's replacement… You can do whatever, I suppose."

Sai gave a creepily fake smile as Orochimaru left, Sasuke following him. Once they were gone, Sakura went over to Sai, hugging him and saying, "Don't listen to him. You're _not_ just a replacement. You're a bona fide member of Team Seven."

Sai patted her back. "I know. Thanks, Hag."

Minato's brow rose at that.

Sakura lightly whapped him over the head, then turned to Minato. "Lead the way, Namikaze-san."

Minato led Sakura to one of the rooms in the third corridor. This one, he knew from his brief exploration, had some medical supplies in it. Once in there, he turned on the lights, and Sakura indicated for him to sit on one of the chairs in there.

"Alright, you should know the deal with a medical check-up, Namikaze-san," she told him. "Shirt off, and no activating anything to do with chakra unless I ask you to."

Minato did as he was told, then said, "You can just call me Minato. Namikaze-san is a bit too formal, don't you think?"

A small smile played on her lips. "Alright then, Minato," she agreed, her hands glowing green as she started his physical.

"How have you been doing since you got here?" she asked as she worked. "Symptoms of any sort that you didn't have before?"

"The occasional dizzy spell, moments of physical weakness," Minato told her. "Orochimaru-sama has been keeping an eye on my recovery, most likely due to his research."

Sakura hummed, and Minato inhaled sharply as he felt her chakra enter his respiratory system. "Kakashi-sensei's not happy with him," she admitted. "This is a pretty big thing for him to have 'forgotten' about."

"Well, he seems genuinely excited about all the data," Minato said breathily, "so I don't think he was lying about it slipping his mind. Oh, and Kakashi-_sensei_?"

Sakura's lip quirked in genuine amusement, and Minato's heart skipped a beat as her chakra now flowed through his cardiovascular system. "Yes, sensei," she confirmed. "though technically I should be calling him _Hokage-sama_, now."

Minato's eyes widened in shock. "Kakashi's _Hokage_!?" he spluttered, and Sakura laughed in delight.

"For just over three years now," she told him. "Tsunade-shishou dumped it all on him after the last war, claiming she was too old and too tired to do it anymore, and took off for a year's holiday to go gambling and drinking."

Minato sat there for a bit as she worked, just taking this all in. "Kakashi's Hokage," he muttered. "Does he, uh, have anyone special in his life? A girlfriend? Fiancee? Something like that?"

"Not really," Sakura hummed. "Though… he and I were seeing each other until about six months ago."

Minato's brow rose in surprise. "I assumed… Sorry, but based on what happened earlier…"

"Sasuke and I aren't together," she told him as her chakra cut off and she stood up a bit straighter. "It's hard to put yourself into that kind of relationship with someone who's tried to kill you a number of times."

"Then what was that with Karin?" Minato asked.

Sakura shrugged as she reached into the backpack she'd brought with her, pulling out a notepad and pen. "I just don't get along with her," she admitted. "It doesn't help that Sasuke uses me as a crutch to keep her at arms length. Now shush a moment while I write."

Minato dutifully kept silent, the only sound in the room being Sakura's pen scratching over paper, and the rustle of that paper when she flipped to a new page. He watched her work, noting the ever so slight protrusion of her tongue at the edge of her mouth as she scribbled. The way her brow scrunched, and the way her body was angled, leaning against a filing cabinet. His eyes roamed over her, and that was when he realised that he was checking her out!

Abruptly he tore his gaze from her, wondering if it would be alright for him to put his shirt back on now? Eventually Sakura finished, and she nodded when he asked her that.

"So what's the prognosis?" he asked after he'd pulled his shirt back on.

"You're in perfect health," she told him. "Now I guess, you need to decide if you're coming back with us when we return to Konoha in a few days."

Minato opened his mouth to answer, but he didn't know what to say. He closed his mouth, wondering… A hand reached out and touched his shoulder, and he glanced up to see Sakura looking at him sympathetically.

"It's up to you," she said. "What do you want to do?"

What indeed.


End file.
